GEOLOGY AS PART OF A COLLEGE CURRICULUM. 39 



once classify as among the practical sciences. It deals with matters 

 of practical importance to everybody. Coal, iron, the metals, 

 silver, gold, tin, lead, building stone, sand, clay, petroleum, and 

 natural gas, and all geological products are essential materials of 

 modern civilization, and a knowledge of them and of their 

 modes and places of occurrence is one of the requisites of an 

 education, either from the practical or the liberal point of view. 

 So too the dynamics of atmospheric and hydraulic erosion, the 

 agency of rivers and oceans in destruction, removal and recon- 

 struction of geological formations have their eminently practical 

 bearings upon the various arts of engineering. While the 

 practical value of geology is thus evident and undisputed, it 

 is not on this account that its importance as a part of a college 

 course of education is urged. As a practical study geology 

 becomes the centre of a group of studies requiring years for 

 mastery. Chemistry and physics are primarily essential to a full 

 understanding of the most common of geological problems. 

 And to use geological facts and phenomena, an acquaintance 

 with the complex methods of engineering, civil and mechanical, 

 which again call for a thorough mastery of mathematics, is 

 necessary. Mineralogy and petrography, metallurgy and mining 

 engineering have each reached a stage of development entitling 

 them to the rank of separate sciences, but the practical training 

 of the geologist should include them all. When we add the 

 biological sciences connected with historical geology, paleon- 

 tology, zoology and botany, with all the laboratory and field 

 work required for their proper study, we have a group of 

 affiliated branches of learning requiring four or five years of 

 continuous study after the student has learned how to study. 

 It is plain therefore that only a specialist, one who is willing 

 to neglect other studies, or who has previously had a liberal 

 training, can perfect himself on the practical side in the science 

 of geology. 



But irrespective of its practical uses, as a means of training 

 and supplementary to the ordinary studies of a college curricu- 

 lum, geology is one of the most useful of the sciences of obser- 



